


In the Darkness

by BootsnBlossoms, Kryptaria



Series: Refraction [8]
Category: James Bond (Craig movies), James Bond (Movies), Skyfall (2012) - Fandom
Genre: Angst, Backstory, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Nyctophobia (Fear of Darkness), PTSD, Panic Attacks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-12
Updated: 2013-09-26
Packaged: 2017-12-26 08:28:55
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 20,311
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/963797
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BootsnBlossoms/pseuds/BootsnBlossoms, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kryptaria/pseuds/Kryptaria
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"There’s been an accident. We don’t know what’s happened. Are you all right? Are you hurt?"</p><p>"It’s dark," Q whispered, daring to crack his eyes open again, only to be greeted with the same endless black. "Fuck, James. My head hurts, and it’s dark."</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [themuller](https://archiveofourown.org/users/themuller/gifts).



> Our first of two AO3 auction fics is finally going up! The request from themueller was simple - "Q on a train."
> 
> We hope you love it. 
> 
> Special thanks, in alpha order, to and [fightyourdragon](http://fightyourdragon.tumblr.com/), [kissofflame (](http://kissofflame.tumblr.com/)[FlutterFyre](http://archiveofourown.org/users/FlutterFyre/pseuds/FlutterFyre)), [rayvanfox](http://zooeyscigar.tumblr.com/), and [stephrc79](http://stephrc79.tumblr.com/)for their marvelous beta work! You guys are awesome <3

Clearly, Q wasn’t expecting Bond back yet.

There were several clues that led Bond to this conclusion, not the least of which was the fact that Q was fully dressed in his favourite scruffy superhero pyjama bottoms, and that there was some rap song being played far, far too loudly on their flat’s in-ceiling stereo system.

The fact that Q was in the kitchen dancing was also a strong hint.

Not that Bond and Q didn’t enjoy dancing, of course. They frequented enough concert venues to explore several styles of dancing, from the highly-choreographed spins over spotless, shiny floors to classical music to the almost-sex grinding in darker corners of abandoned warehouses while underground rock bands played deafeningly loudly.

Privately, Bond would never admit that those warehouses were his favourites. But there in the dark, filthy corners of London, Q let go in a way he never did, except when they were alone, late at night, far from the pressure of work and social expectations. Q threw aside his inhibitions and his desperate desire to be responsible and professional and adult.

Now, watching Q dance through the kitchen, hips swaying seductively, eyes closed, head thrown back, Bond was drawn in as though hypnotised. The muffled thump of bags dropping was completely lost under the music, and Q had no idea he was even there.

The tattoo crawling up Q’s ribs flashed as he spun. More subtle, the greyscale 007 between his shoulderblades called to Bond, who pounced as soon as Q’s back was turned.

Q’s eyes flew open and he jolted at the contact, but as soon as he realised it was Bond, he relaxed. “You’re lucky I’ve become desensitised to your sneak attacks,” he almost-yelled, struggling to be heard over the music.

Bond spun him around and shoved him against the counter, going right for his throat. “You shouldn’t drop your guard,” he growled into Q’s skin as his one token kiss turned into a bite. He got one leg between Q’s and ground up against him, loving the contrast of fine wool and soft flannel. “God, I could watch you do that all night,” he muttered before he licked the bite.

“Not tonight,” Q said with a groan as he hitched a leg around Bond’s waist. “I’m leaving for Baskerville tomorrow morning, so you’ll want to take advantage of your post-mission high tonight.”

“Baskerville?” Bond asked, arms tightening around Q. “That’s all the way in Devon. You’ll be gone all day,” he complained, nudging Q’s chin up to get at the soft skin underneath. “Send a minion.”

“I can’t,” Q said, an edge of excitement creeping into his voice. “I’m picking up some incredible tech, and I need to work with the scientists on it there before I bring it back to MI6. Nanotech and 3D printing combined, James. It’s incredible.”

“But I have to deal with Mallory tomorrow. I can’t go with you. Unless we poison Mallory,” Bond said, backing off to grin fiercely at Q. “Noxious gas in the ventilation system in the exec branch. We could take a brief holiday on the coast.”

Q gave him a scolding look before he chased Bond’s body with his own, pulling Bond back down over him with insistent hands in his hair. “We’ve talked about how much harder my life would be if Mallory were to vanish,” he said sternly. “Don’t worry. I’ll have guards. I’m not going alone. Twelve hours, tops. Then I’ll be back, and you _know_ how I am after I get to work on something like that.” He bit Bond’s ear and let go to brace himself on the counter so he could wrap his other leg around Bond, a wicked smirk taking over his expression.

“We could dress your guards in suits and send them to Mallory instead of me,” Bond proposed, getting one hand into the waistband of Q’s pyjama bottoms. “I’ll go with you. If I recall, you thoroughly enjoyed my body armour.”

“Oh, fuck,” Q said, eyes darkening as he looked at Bond, legs pulling tighter. “Yes, please. Mallory won’t notice, will he? It’s just a day.”

“Mmm, what about hallucinogens in the water that feeds their coffee pots?” Bond suggested. He got his hands under Q’s hips and lifted as he stepped back, easily supporting Q’s slight weight. “Leave them chasing butterflies for the day while I fuck you in a supply closet in the middle of one of England’s most secure military research facilities.”

“Forget the supply closet,” Q growled, leaning forward to lick and nip at Bond’s ear again. “We could fuck on the floor of the closed-off train car with the tech looming behind us, shiny and pretty and ready for my modifications.”

Bond refrained from laughing at Q’s strange fetishes only because of the next sharp bite. He growled, thinking the bedroom was too fucking far away, but the office... that wasn’t far at all, and was the closest they had to a tech haven in the flat.

There was very little room between planning and acting, in Bond’s mind. He carried Q out of the kitchen, kicking his bags out of the way, and licked at Q’s throat before he nipped again. “You’d need to ride me, Q. Unless you think” — he tried very hard not to laugh now — “you’d be distracted, between the combat gear and your technology.”

“Are you kidding?” Q huffed. “You, on your back. Me, able to stare at the two things I love most in the world  —  you and a promising new project. God, James, I don’t think I’d last very long.”

Bond laughed and pushed open the office door with his hip, glad that Q never closed it all the way. Q’s head came up as he realised they weren’t going into the bedroom, and before he could ask, Bond said, “I want you over your desk.”

“Watch out for the knife cuff,” Q warned, casting a look over his shoulder at his rather messy desk. “And the bot. And the Arduino board. Hell, just sweep it all off. It’s fine.”

Anywhere else — in Q’s office or one of the labs or a Q Branch workshop — Bond might have hesitated. At home, though, Q never worked with explosives, and he was more magpie than tech, collecting shiny treasures for the sake of having them to tinker. So Bond had no qualms about setting Q down long enough to shove everything over the far side of the desk in a clattering waterfall of copper and green and multi-coloured wires. Then he picked Q up and set him back down on the sturdy desk.

“Hallucinogens in the coffee,” he reminded Q as he tugged at the pyjama bottoms.

“And every guard dressed exactly the same,” Q added with a giggle as he tugged off his bottoms  —  revealing the fact that he hadn’t bothered with pants. “We could even get Psych involved. They’d have a field day.”

Bond laughed and pulled off his tie, dropping it on Q’s chest. The colours looked muted and dull against the brilliant wires of his tattoo. “Stay,” he said, leaning down for another kiss as he undid one cufflink, then the other. “Supplies.”

Q picked up the tie, dragged it up his chest, then wound it around his hands. “I’m sure I can think of something to do while I wait.”

The image of Q helpless before him, wrists bound, made his breath catch. He didn’t leave the desk — he _couldn’t_.

“Show me,” he said quietly.

Q smirked, then freed the tie just long enough to start re-wrapping it more securely around his own wrists. He didn’t actually knot the fabric, but held the ends tightly in his hands. Then he slid back several inches and finally laid down in a smooth, rolling motion that saw his spine and shoulders settle gracefully on the scarred wood.

“Like this?” Q asked in a low voice, reaching up and letting his bound hands fall behind his head. He drew up one leg, placing it flat on the desk, and gave his spine a slight arch.

Bond didn’t touch. If he touched, he’d be too tempted to _take_ , and Q wasn’t ready, and there wasn’t a single condom within ten metres. So he reached up, leaning close enough for his jacket to brush over Q’s skin, and caught hold of the tie. His lips were almost touching Q’s as he said, “No.” And he backed away only long enough to guide Q’s almost-bound hands to his cock as he whispered, “I want to watch you, like this.”

Q breathed in and out slowly, his chest rising and falling visibly. “Fine. But you have to help.” He caught Bond’s hand in between his and guided it to wrap around his cock. He pushed Bond by the wrists, first pulling up then sliding down, a low moan escaping him. “Kiss me,” he whispered.

Gently, Bond brushed his lips over Q’s, twisting his hand so his fingertips mirrored the soft touch. He licked as he swiped his thumb across the glans, and he heard the way Q moaned in sudden understanding. “Show me what you want,” he said, with another lick-and-swipe.

“God,” Q breathed out. He closed his eyes and tipped his head, licking his own lips before tentatively licking Bond’s. He started at the corner of Bond’s mouth, pressure almost too light to feel, before dragging his tongue across until he pushed hard enough for his tongue to dip into Bond’s mouth.

Bond hooked one finger over his tie, pulling Q’s hands along as he smoothed his palm around Q’s cock before gliding down. He licked at Q’s tongue and applied gentle pressure with his teeth, letting his hand go still.

“Show me,” he demanded again when Q lost the kiss, caught up in his own body’s distraction.

“James,” Q protested with a quiet sigh. But he tipped his head up ever so slightly and starting kissing Bond just as slowly, but a bit more roughly, dragging his tongue over Bond’s, twisting it over the tip, before pulling away to nip at Bond’s lower lip.

Bond’s hand matched Q’s kiss as best he could. He tightened his hand and pressed down slowly, keeping Q’s bound hands close to his own. Then he stroked up and over the head again, closing his eyes to concentrate on Q’s breathing.

“You are so fucking expressive,” he whispered, uncurling his fingers. He let go of Q’s wrists and pushed Q’s hands down to take his place. “Don’t stop.”

Q threw himself into the kiss this time, exploring Bond’s mouth as if it were the first time. He dragged his tongue over every inch, from roof to tongue to teeth. He copied his own movements with his hand, body going taut and trembling as he got closer. After long minutes of breathless kissing, Q let his head fall back against the desk again even as he arched his body more. “James,” he said again, eyes squeezed shut, hands still moving.

“Fuck.” Bond pulled away from the kiss and turned to watch, moving his hand down to Q’s inner thigh, pulling his legs further apart. He dropped back down off the desk and traced his other hand over Q’s mouth, knowing how the light touch would spark along Q’s lips. The tie around Q’s wrists made him graceless, giving his motions a desperate edge that lit fires somewhere in the back of his mind.

“Don’t stop,” he repeated more sharply. He slid his finger into Q’s mouth, pressing the tip against his teeth, not for the first time hating his damned job and how often he had to fuck his way through a mission, denying him the pleasure of this sort of direct touch. One day, even if he had to quit for a year, he _would_ have Q like this, bare and desperate and _needing_ him.

Q’s mouth fell open and he groaned loud enough to be heard easily over the sound of the rap music still beating in the speakers throughout the flat. His hips bucked up into his own hands as he wrapped his lips around Bond’s finger and sucked. It took all of Bond’s self-control to keep from letting go of Q’s leg to take down his own trousers, but he didn’t want to distract himself. He stroked his finger over Q’s tongue and dragged his nails over Q’s inner thigh. He wanted to be _in_ Q, watching this from between his legs, and he didn’t realise he was speaking until he heard himself say it.

Q’s response was lost to Bond’s finger. He pulled back enough to add a second, and Q sucked hard as his hands faltered, trying to find a faster, harder rhythm. His wrists strained at the tie, but he still held it tight, ends twisted around his fingers. Bond couldn’t even imagine the contrast of finely woven silk and familiar skin.

“Next time,” he said roughly, digging each fingernail into Q’s thigh in turn. “Next time, I’m going to bury myself inside you, and watch you do this. I’m going to feel your pulse and every twitch until you come with me deep in you, watching.”

Q’s mouth fell open, his groan long and low and full of need. “Fuck yes,” he managed to say, swallowing hard, before he closed his mouth around Bond’s fingers again. He opened his eyes again, meeting Bond’s gaze, as he moved his hands faster and sucked harder. A series of quiet but high-pitched hums escaped Q’s throat as he drew closer to climax, eyes never leaving Bond’s.

For one moment, Bond was tempted to stop him — to take hold of his bound wrists and pull his hands away, to carry him into the bedroom and fuck him hard into the mattress — but he didn’t want to wait. “Q,” he snapped, pushing his fingers over Q’s tongue, chest going tight at the thought of feeling that wet heat on his cock. “Now.”

Eyes widening impossibly further, Q stopped breathing for a brief moment before he moaned one more time, body freezing for a long moment as the first wave of pleasure crashed over his body. Then his eyes slammed shut again, his body arched hard, and he spilled all over his hands and the tie. “James,” he gasped out, moving his hands more slowly, tremors shaking his thin, colorful body before he collapsed back on the desk, breath coming in hard pants.

Bond leaned back over the desk, catching long, messy strands of hair between his fingers. He lifted Q’s head enough to kiss him between his gasps, slow and careful licks into Q’s open mouth. “You are so fucking perfect,” he whispered into Q’s ragged breaths.

“Oh god,” Q panted, opening his eyes to look at Bond, smile tugging at his mouth. “I think I ruined your tie. Sorry.”

“I’ll buy you another one to ruin tomorrow,” Bond said, thinking he’d buy out a whole bloody shop of them to have Q like that.

“Only if next time you carry through on your promise to be inside me,” Q insisted, still smiling. “Though if I’m too late coming home from Baskerville tomorrow, it may have to wait.”

 _Baskerville_ , Bond thought, with an irrational, frustrated surge of irritation. Q seemed to notice his mood, and sat up curiously. “Oh, don’t be jealous of the shiny new tech. It’s always you I come home to.” He leaned in for another kiss, and added with a quiet whisper, “Your turn.”

Bond let the thought soothe him, though he still had the urge to lock the flat and not let Q out until they’d both sated themselves. Somewhere in the weeks and months since he’d found Q, the demands of the outside world, once a welcome distraction, had become tiresome. Not for the first time, he wondered if he’d walk out of the Double O programme, rather than being carried out.

“Shower,” he said, pushing the thoughts abruptly away. He had Q here with him, right now. That was enough, and as if to prove it to them both, he tugged on Q’s hair to get him to sit up for a long, slow kiss that didn’t break until he felt the demands of tomorrow slip away again.

 

~~~

 

“Okay, let me put it this way,” Q said with a grin Bond couldn’t see. He pushed past the guards at the door to open it, glaring at the one who looked like he was about to say something in an attempt to stop him. The guard shut his mouth with an audible snap, and Q nodded slightly as he walked through the door and outside to cross the rear car. “Remember that mission in Brazil, where our contact died and everyone else was at least a day out from your location? You needed everything from ammo to sunglasses to rope to a new pair of shoes, but I couldn’t get it to you?”

Bond’s voice came over the comms, broken with static from the concrete and earth overhead. “If I find out you went to Baskerville for _shoes_ rather than letting me fuck you over your desk — Wait, is this being monitored?”

Q laughed. "Yes, it is. Say hi, Danielle?"

“007,” she scolded, and Q could imagine Bond’s wince. “Did you break into the Quartermaster’s office?”

“Technically it’s not ‘breaking in’ if I already know the code,” Bond said proudly.

“Would you like me to unleash your automatic defence countermeasures, sir?” she asked Q.

“I don’t think it would help much. The bots seemed to have formed an unhealthy attachment to 007.”

“Wonderful, sir. You’ve made Skynet. Well done, you.”

Bond choked out a laugh. “Hurry, Q. Distract her. Tell me about these shoes.”

Q suppressed a laugh, both imagining Danielle’s disapproving but fond glare and Bond’s suitably chastised expression. “Well," he said quickly after he cleared his throat, "this tech has the potential to instantly manufacture supplies for you on the spot, in the field. 3D printers can make almost anything, if you have the right material. And a nanobot doesn’t actually need access to refined materials  —  they can self-replicate using the resources in their environment. If I had equipped you with your own 3D printer and the seed to a nanobot swarm, you would have been able to print anything you needed and not fried unnecessarily in that jungle.”

“I thought you liked my suntan. And you appreciated the highlights to my hair, all over —”

 _“James!”_ Danielle scolded.

“I was going to say ‘my beard’,” Bond said with innocence no one would ever believe. “I didn’t have a razor, you know.”

"It can make one of those, too," Q interjected. "Razors, weapons, whatever you need."

“See, Danielle?”

“Oh, for love of —” Danielle huffed in an attempt to hide a laugh. “Do you have the specifications on a power source for the printer, sir? I’m fairly sure even you can’t run a 3D printer on cheap snark passing itself off as charming wit.”

Q turned away from the windows of the car door to hide his smirk, as if Danielle would have access to some camera he didn't know about and would be watching disapprovingly. She was in rare form today, and Q felt an uncharacteristic swell of affection — one reserved for very, very few people.

"Solar panels," he managed to say in an impressively even voice. "High output, collapsible — could double as a shock blanket if you needed it badly enough."

“Sounds cosy,” Bond approved. “But if you’re putting it out in the field, aren’t all these precautions a bit much? Or are you going to issue one of those wrist-lanyards with it, like tourists use on cameras?”

Q made it to the back car without any trouble  —  some skills were never forgotten, and traversing the couplings between carriages was one of them. He slid open the rear car’s door and stepped through, grinning at the seemingly innocuous locked boxes strapped to the car’s floor.

“The printer itself isn’t particularly worthy of the armed escort, but the nanobots are. They’re the most high-functioning machines the nanoworld has been able to perfect so far, and if they got loose, they might swarm even without orders and self-replicate. _That_ could be bad  —  in the way unleashing rabbits in nineteenth century Australia was bad. That’s why they’re not being transported by lorry; on the train, I can get them in Q Branch underground, locked and away from the general populace, with minimal risk.”

“You mean these nanobots will unleash _swarms of robotic rabbits_? Well, that’ll wake MI5 up,” Bond said with grim satisfaction.

“You’re _certain_ the defence-bots _like_ him, sir?” Danielle asked. “Perhaps they were just locking in targeting systems, not being cuddly.”

“Locking in targeting systems,” Bond said, a sudden dark, velvety purr coming to his voice. “Let’s try that tonight, shall we, Quartermaster?”

"With or without the creative use of non-lethal lasers?" Q answered in an equally smoky voice — or, at least, tried to. He wasn't the best at seduction, but he was learning. He closed his eyes for a moment, thinking about his selection of laser pointers, in various colours and with some interesting shapes. That could be _fun_.

“Have you forwarded me the inventory records?” Danielle interrupted quickly. “Ah, yes. I see you have. Thank you, sir.”

“Quick, while she’s distracted, tell me about these nanobots,” Bond said. “Are they like the ones in that Michael Crichton book from ten years ago?”

Q stood peering at the labels on the boxes, thinking about it. He didn't remember much about that book, other than the fact that nanobots got loose, tried to imitate people, and the lady scientist was having an affair. "I'd imagine there are similarities," he said noncommittally. "We'll have to study them for a while before we learn more about how the swarm behaviour works."

“Do try not to break London while you’re at it. There are so many places we haven’t —”

“James!” Danielle snapped.

_“Visited!”_

“If I believed that for _one second_...” Danielle muttered.

"Do you think that if I break London, I'll get promoted or demoted?" Q asked curiously. He wondered if being banished to the somewhat more secure, and definitely more remote, Baskerville would be a bad thing or not. Even just thinking about their labs and the free rein the scientists there had...

“I’d have to report you, sir,” Danielle threatened. “You’d get written up.”

“Administrative leave. I rather like the sound of that. I’ll help,” Bond offered.

Privately, Q doubted it. This year had been quite busy for Bond, and he never seemed to be in London for longer than a handful of days at a time. "I'm sure I could find creative ways to —"

A deafeningly loud screech of metal cut off Q’s response, and he just had time to say “What was —” before the smell of explosives and a shock wave hit him. He could feel the car slam with the sudden loss of forward motion, and he fell into the metal containers in the back with a hard crack.

Dizziness and fear overwhelmed him for a brief moment, and he groaned at the pain that reverberated through his skull.

“James!” he gasped out before a another jolt slammed the car, and he was thrown from the boxes to the floor.

Then everything went dark.

 

~~~

 

Q woke to the familiar sound of James in his ear, but it wasn’t the usual soothing, seductive tones he’d become used to after nearly a year of waking up in Bond’s bed. In fact, Bond sounded frantic  —  a tone Q wasn’t used to hearing _at all_. Q tried to focus on the words, groaning at the pain in his head.

“Q? Dammit, talk to me!” Bond demanded, followed by, “I don’t bloody care! _Fix it!_ ”

“I’m up,” Q muttered, sitting up and opening his eyes. He expected to be greeted by the familiar site of their bedroom, but was shocked to see - nothing. He closed his eyes, trying to remember what had happened, hand coming up to a painful spot on his head. He tried opening his eyes again, and his breath caught as his vision didn’t change  —  everything was still black.

“Fuck,” he muttered, panic stealing his breath, before he couldn’t take it anymore and closed his eyes again. “Shit, shit, shit. What happened? Where am I?”

“Thank god,” Bond said, voice breaking. He took a breath, shaky and quick. “There’s been an accident. We don’t know what’s happened. Are you all right? Are you hurt?”

“It’s dark,” Q whispered, daring to crack his eyes open again, only to be greeted with the same endless black. “Fuck, James. My head hurts, and it’s dark.”

Bond’s answering curse was Russian, a habit he only indulged when things were bad. _Very_ bad. “Stay still. Don’t move.”

But Q wasn’t really listening to James  —  he couldn’t focus, couldn’t think, couldn’t do anything but try to imagine ways out of wherever he was. “Come get me _right now_ ,” he demanded as he starting patting his pockets for something, anything, that would be useful.

His mobile. He could use the torch app on his mobile.

Q pulled it out of his pocket triumphantly and aimed it at the front doors. They were twisted and melted from the blast that knocked him out, and the stone behind the windows revealed that there was no way Q was getting out of them.

There was no other way out.

“We’re already working on it. You’re in London, Q. You’re not far away at all. _Don’t move_.”

“I can’t get out,” Q muttered, aiming the torch everywhere, looking for an escape. “Shit. James. You _have_ to come and get me!”

After another vicious, growled curse, Bond said, “Switching to remote comms. Danielle —”

“I’m here,” she said, her voice steady and calm. “Quartermaster, sitrep, please.”

"Danielle?" Q asked, surprised. He took a deep, calming breath, and tried to focus. He switched the mobile to his left hand and gingerly reached up to feel his head wound with the right. Q actually had no idea whether it was possible to feel if the skull was fractured or not, but it didn't matter. He couldn't bring himself to touch the wound anyway.

But he was conscious, and that counted for something, right?

"I have a head wound, but otherwise I think I'm fine. I'm in a train car, I think." He searched the compartment methodically with his mobile. "Alone. Cargo."

“Comms check,” Bond interrupted, his voice thinner now. Earwig, Q identified. He was off his headset. He was mobile.

“HQ clear,” Danielle reported.

"Looks like an explosion of some sort, directed between the train carriages. The doors are melted and warped." He walked over to them, trying to find something to hold onto. His light landed on a twisted bit of door that he could get purchase on, and he pulled as hard as he could, grunting at the exertion. "Can't get them open."

“Stop moving,” Bond ordered sharply. “ _Think_ , Q. You have a head wound. You need to sit down. If you lose consciousness, you could hurt yourself even worse.”

"I need to get out," Q correctly quietly. "There are no lights in here, and my mobile battery won't last on the torch setting."

“Your —” Bond cut himself off, and if not for the frustrated exhale, Q would’ve thought they’d lost comms. “Q, I need you to listen to me. Can you do that?”

"007?" Q replied with an annoyed huff at the door that still refused to budge.

“Sit down, Q. I’m coming to you. I’ll be there as soon as I can. But I need you to _sit down_.” He took a breath. “And I need you to turn off the mobile. We can use it to locate you precisely, but you need to conserve the battery.”

Q's hand began to shake as he looked down at the torch in his hand. "I..."

It shouldn't be that hard. close the app, close his eyes, sit down, and wait for James. But he didn't know if he could.

Thumb hovering on the home button, Q tried to say something calm, something worthy of his title as Quartermaster. But what came out was, "Don't leave me alone in the dark."

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So much love and adoration to some of my favorite people - rayvanfox, fightyourdragon, and flutterfyre - for jumping in for another round of super-last-minute edits. Love you guys <3

Bond shed his bathrobe at the last moment and got under the blankets, sliding across to get as close to Q as possible. "How romantic," he murmured, stopping when his head was on Q’s pillow in order to avoid getting a sharp elbow in his eye. "Just you, me, and your laptop." He hooked one leg over Q’s and tried to give him a glare, but it was ruined by his affectionate, amused grin. "Checking email or did you have another brilliant idea?"

Q huffed. "Another? As if I ever run out." He looked up from the laptop long enough to take in Bond's fond smile before looking back down at the screen. "I just need to wrap this report. Ten minutes."

Ten minutes plus the laptop equalled to two hours or more, Bond knew, but he couldn’t find it in himself to be annoyed. At least Q was _in bed_ , this time, instead of in his office or curled up on the sofa.

He twisted under the blankets and went for his bedside table. "Aren’t you freezing? You have the air conditioning set to Siberia. You’re not expecting Alec over or something, are you?" Then, because he couldn’t resist, he turned and looked suspiciously over his shoulder at Q. "I don’t have to worry about you two, do I? I know he’s your second-favourite agent."

 _That_ seemed to grab Q's attention. He looked up with a deeply annoyed expression, glaring at Bond. "For someone who wants my attention, you sure do have odd ways of getting it _while we're in bed_ ," he chastised. "Alec," he muttered indignantly, shaking his head as he looked down at his laptop. "I can't decide if that's more or less annoying than your fixation with Eve." He paused, looked back up at Bond, and giggled. "Alec and Eve. How did I not notice that before?" He laughed.

Grinning, Bond turned back to the drawer and dug through the contents. Revolver, 9mm, two knives, condoms, lubricant. "Psych would have a field day here. If I end up dead on another mission again, please do keep Psych out of this drawer? They give me enough bloody tests when I come back from the dead. I don’t need them analysing all this lot," he said, finally finding the sleep mask in the back. It was a little dusty, so he brushed it off as he rolled back over, getting just close enough to be able to rest a hand on Q’s hip.

Q slammed his laptop shut, set it on his bedside table, and turned to glare at Bond again. He was silent for several long moments before he finally spoke. "Low blow, James. Completely unfair." He snuggled down into the blankets with Bond, watching him.

"Guns, knives, and condoms? I’m a damned serial killer." Bond grinned and moved his hand from Q’s hip to his face, tracing the sharp line of his cheekbone. "Lights on or off tonight?"

Q raised his eyebrow expectantly.

Bond laughed and inched over enough to pull Q in for a kiss. "It’s fine. Besides, any voyeurs with telescopes in nearby buildings would be disappointed if they couldn’t watch."

Q rolled back enough to cast a glance at the window, eyeing the open curtains. Then, in an unexpectedly fast movement, he rolled out of bed. He dashed, naked, to the window, staying to the side as if to avoid being seen, and threw the curtains shut. Then he ran back, bouncing on the bed before yanking the covers back over him, laughing.

"You're right, it's a bit chilly out there." He snuggled close to Bond, pressing skin to skin wherever possible. "Guess you'd better warm me up."

"You are absolutely fucking _adorable_ ," Bond said, finally giving in to the laughter that threatened. He caught Q in his arms and rolled onto his back so he could look up at Q’s face, shadowed by the fall of his long, messy hair. He knew that Q loved being under him, but a corner of Bond’s mind still worried about leaving bruises or hurting him. Besides, rather selfishly, he found it much easier to admire the view this way.

Q sighed. "I really should learn how to _not_ giggle, shouldn't I? It's not very Quartermaster-like of me." He lay down on top of Bond, pulling the blanket up over his shoulders. He folded his forearms on Bond's chest and looked down contemplatively. "I have an idea. For another game. You try to make me giggle, and I get points for managing not to. You get points for making me." He leaned down just far enough to lick at Bond's mouth and pulled back with a smile. "That's your kind of game, isn't it? I'll even let you decide what the winner gets."

Bond slid his hands down Q’s back, fingertips trailing over his spine. He abandoned the sleep mask in the middle of Q’s back to better feel his warm, smooth skin. "You know what I want as a prize," he said, dragging one hand up, over the 007 tattoo, to tangle in his hair. The other hand found the curve of Q’s arse and pushed down, bringing their bodies even closer together.

Q laughed and ground his hips down. Then he slapped a hand over his mouth, looking down at Bond. "Shit. Let's just assume you're going to win this time, shall we? Prize first, game second? Just to take the pressure off." He grinned down at Bond, rolling his hips again.

Trying to suppress his own laughter — and failing, judging by the little huffs that escaped him — Bond spread his legs, trapped Q, and twisted. Q’s back hit the mattress with a sharp, sudden exhale, and his eyes went wide as he looked up at Bond.

"You forget. I cheat," Bond said, moving his legs to straddle Q’s narrow hips so he could sit back. The blanket slid off his shoulders, revealing the brilliant lines of Q’s tattoo crawling over his ribs, colours shifting and writhing as he breathed, lightly and quickly. "God, look at you," Bond said reverently, barely touching Q’s sternum with his fingertips.

"James," Q all but whispered, looking up at Bond with awe. He reached up to rest his hands on Bond's knees — the only part he could reach without sitting up, and smiled softly. "Go on then," he challenged in a firmer voice.

Affection. Protectiveness. Possessiveness. Love. Even now, after all these months, Bond wasn’t prepared for the wonderful, terrifying feelings that twisted up in his chest and stopped his breathing. He looked away from Q’s eyes, trying to allow the sight of Q’s body to distract him, to ground him in the physical reality that was far more comfortable than these undefinable emotions.

He slid back and leaned down, bracing his hands to either side of Q’s ribs, thinking that if he didn’t get his mouth on Q’s body soon, his last defences might just shatter. He bent to lick at Q’s collarbone, and his fingers encountered a sharp edge on the sheets.

Reflexively, he snatched at it, mind flashing to the memory of _things_ in his bed — scorpions in the desert, the tarantula a vengeful lover had tried to use to kill him, fallen knives — but it was only the velcro sewn to the strap on the sleep mask.

He refused to consider the fact that he’d _caught it_ , rather than flinging it away. Thinking it could be some living, venomous trap, he’d captured it to contain the threat, even at the cost of his own skin, rather than leaving it free to come back and hurt Q.

"James?" Q asked, turning his head to look at the sleep mask. He sat up a little, resting his weight on his forearms pressed against the bed. "Everything all right?"

Bond exhaled, resisting the urge to throw the damned sleep mask aside. "Fine." He turned back to Q and wondered how he could explain his moment of insanity. He dropped the sleep mask on Q’s chest and just said, "The velcro’s sharp. It surprised me. _Someone_ distracted me from remembering it was there."

Q reached out to pick up the mask, expression thoughtful. "I could design you something much better than this flimsy thing. More comfortable, and with a few modifications that would help..." He paused and looked up at Bond. "Maybe I could use some of the same technology that I used in coming up with Dark Mode for my office. Clears at a touch. Or a voice command, even. Though I'd have to put a tiny computer on it. Which I could do. And wrap it in leather and silk, to make it comfy.'"

"You..." Bond’s laughter escaped again, a little sharp with relief and amusement at their mutual foolishness. No one would ever consider either of them to be normal. He leaned down to kiss his mad lover, feeling Q’s grin as it appeared. "It’s a blindfold, not nightvision gear, and I only have it so I don’t end up suffocating with blankets over my head."

"Blankets over your head?" Q repeated. Then chagrin took over and he looked away before looking up at the overhead lights. "I... maybe I can modify the lights? Motion sensitive?"

Bond touched Q’s lips once more before he propped up on one elbow. "Then you’ll just get in the habit of flinging out an arm every time they go off. I can sleep with steady lights much better than strobes," he teased. He got his free hand between their bodies to grab the sleep mask. It was lightweight, shaped foam, curved so it didn’t even touch the wearer’s eyelashes. Very, very carefully, he asked, "Did you want to try it on? It’s surprisingly comfortable."

"What?" Q straightened and looked at the mask before looking incredulously at Bond. "No. That's not like your silk ties, James. It's _designed_ to keep out the light."

Soothingly, Bond said, "I know. But I’m right here. I won’t leave you. And you don’t have to."

Q looked at the mask and shook his head. "No. I'm sorry, but... I'll look into smart motion sensors, okay?" The look he gave Bond was almost pleading.

"It’s fine," Bond said immediately, and tossed the mask over the far side of the bed. He kissed Q and buried both hands in his hair, repeating, "It’s fine, love."

Q's exhale was long and relieved, and he kissed Bond back slowly, pulling him close. "Thank you. I'm sorry I can't..." He took a deep breath and buried his nose in Bond's neck. "Thank you."

Bond got his arms under Q’s body and held him close, trying to ignore the apprehension that rose up inside him. Q’s fear of the dark was still paralysing. But that was fine. If it meant leaving all the lights in the flat on day and night, Bond could handle it, as long as Q stayed with him.

 

~~~

 

James was talking but Q wasn't listening. He'd done what James had asked him to do only because logic told him that his lover was right. They needed the GPS chip in his phone to transmit his location. If Q ran out his battery, not only would there be no light, there would be no quick and efficient way for James to find him.

Of course, logic had very little to do with phobias.

Tiny detail by tiny detail, Q could hear James explain what MI6 was doing to rescue him, but it passed like noise through his consciousness. His skin prickled and he kept himself absolutely still, irrationally afraid of what he couldn't see. He tried to console himself with the fact that it was only him, alone, in the wrecked train carriage, but it didn't stop his heart from beating wildly in his chest, his breath from coming in short ragged pants, his mind from interpreting every random sound as a threat.

He closed his eyes, only to shudder at the complete lack of change. _No one’s here_ , he told himself, trying to keep his body from bracing against a violent grip that wouldn’t actually come. _No one’s here. I’m safe. James is coming. No one’s here._

"Q? Are you listening to me?"

Q heard it distantly, but he couldn’t answer. He couldn’t make any noise at all. Being hypervigilant completely stole his focus. His attention. He wasn’t even sure he was breathing.

"These nanobots. You said something about a swarm? That sounds like bees," Bond said. "I don’t exactly like things that sting, you know. Tell me you’ve got some arcane maths that will keep them from attacking me in the field."

"I..." Q started, the absurdity of the idea pulling at him to focus more on what James was saying. "What?"

"Your nanobots," he answered casually. "How the bloody hell do you control them? It has to be maths, yes? Tell me it’s not chaos maths. I saw _Jurassic Park_. I know how chaos theory ends."

"Adaptive programming," Q said, opening his eyes. Or, at least, it _felt_ like he opened his eyes. He'd learned a long time ago that when he was in the dark, it was never easy to tell. Not that it mattered.

"And we’re back to Skynet. If we’re taking over the Earth with robots, you at least have a secret lunar base, don’t you? Somewhere we can hide out?" Then Bond laughed, though the sound was slightly strained. "God, the very thought of making love to you in low-gravity."

Q's attention was snapped into focus by the last sentence, hearing James' use of the colloquial phrase for sex. He'd never used that phrase before, _ever_ , as far as Q could remember. "I wonder what my hair would look like," he managed, with a very quiet exhale that tried to be a laugh.

"You’d be bloody gorgeous," Bond answered. "Can you do something for me? I want you to reach out with your right hand. Tell me what you feel, all right?"

Q nodded, even though he knew Bond wouldn't see it. He didn't remember sitting on the floor in the corner, but he was so close to the train carriage wall that he didn't need to move to slide his hand along it. "Metal. Cold. Slightly curved. It doesn't seem to have been affected by the blast on this side." He tried to visualise the calculations for describing the mathematical curve of the carriage, but they weren't coming to him.

"Do you feel any rivets or bolts? Don’t get up. Just tell me whatever you feel that’s in arm’s reach."

"Yes. The aluminium kickboards along the bottom have rivets." Q dragged his fingers along the metal, silently counting. "Six within reach. Why?"

"How high are the kickboards? How much space between the rivets?" Bond persisted. "Can you calculate the tensile strength of the metal from just that?"

It took Q about five seconds to realise what Bond was doing — an unforgivable length of time that was as much a mark of his panic as anything. But he didn’t protest Bond’s attempt to help him focus — he merely acquiesced, reciting the calculations out loud, continuing to run his hands along every surface within reach.

Q touched and felt and tried his best to think only about what his fingers were reporting, focusing entirely on the metal and type of rivets and his early memories of Bond talking him through car rides and taxi rides.

 _James_ , he thought, focusing wholly on his calm, steady voice. It was a curious reversal; normally, it was Q who was talking Bond through a crisis, giving directions and instructions.

It was calming, Q thought, almost in tears with sudden relief that they’d arranged this not-quite-standard use of MI6 comms. Yes, technically, the remote team would be in communications with HQ, but he’d insisted on having Bond involved.

"Fuck," Bond said sharply. "Danielle. Find me a fucking way around this!"

"Working on it, 007," Danielle answered.

Q didn’t ask at first — he almost didn’t want to know if something was standing between him and Bond. But perhaps it was something Q could help with, a problem he could focus on, solve. Be active in his own rescue.

"What is it?" he asked as unemotionally as he could manage.

"We’ve had to close some of the roads around the incident site," Danielle answered calmly. "The cover story is a sinkhole. We’re keeping airspace currently clear, though I’m certain some clever bastard with a camera will have uploaded something to Instagram by now."

"Right. New plan," Bond growled. "Send a retrieval team for the car. I’m going in on foot."

"How long will that take?" Q asked, dragging his knuckles along the rivets now, letting the sensory input help keep him grounded. "Is the extraction team facing the same problem?"

"They’re en route. The Met emergency services teams are already onsite," Danielle assured him.

"I’ll be there as soon as I can, Q," Bond promised grimly. "Tell me more. What can you smell? Anything? What about the temperature?"

"If they’re onsite, can I turn on my phone again?" Q asked Bond quietly. "It won’t be long now."

"Not yet," Bond said at once.

"There’s a bit of debris to clear out, sir," Danielle added smoothly. "We need to be careful shifting it, or it could cause complications."

"Complications," Q repeated. "There has been a fundamental altering of the tunnel’s structure due to the explosion." He paused, thinking about the incredible force that must have been used, thinking that he was lucky to be alive. If he could really think of it that way. "Cave-ins."

"Not going to happen," Bond snapped. "I _will_ come to you. Understand?"

"Right. Uh, you asked about smells. Heated metal. Scorched wood." Q was trying to focus on what Bond asked, but the calm he’d felt only moments ago had completely vanished. Cave-ins meant being buried. Trapped in the dark with no hope of rescue. "Almonds." _Trapped in the dark._

"Temperature? What are you wearing?" Bond’s laugh sounded false and cracked. "Describe in gentle detail. Danielle’s listening."

"I..." Q was rapidly losing focus, logic, rationality. Despite running his knuckles along the metal edges of the carriage, tearing some of the skin in the process, he couldn’t keep himself in the moment. The carriage was vanishing around him, blackness taking over, childhood fears resurfacing as if he were still there, being pulled back across time. Every sound seemed to announce the arrival of people he’d long since escaped. He curled away, trying to make himself as small as possible, eyes straining against the impenetrable black in an effort to finally, for once, see it coming. "James," he whispered desperately, trying to hold onto the one anchor he had.

"I’ll be there soon," Bond answered. "Stay with me, Q."

Q tried, but he just... couldn’t. Panic breathing took over, and the world vanished in a roar of blood rushing through his ears. His heart thudded painfully in his chest, and he was certain it was giving him away. There was nothing left but the fear.

Q curled tightly against the wall, and with a shaking hand he dug carefully for the phone in his pocket that refused to reveal itself. "You have to get me out," Q whispered, trying to keep his voice as small as possible. "I can never see when they’re coming."

"What?" Bond asked sharply.

"Rescue teams will be there very soon," Danielle said.

"Q? Q, stay with me," Bond insisted. "I’ll be right there. I’m coming for you. I promise."

Trying not to let his frantic movements betray his location in the carriage, Q kept digging in his pockets with minute, tightly controlled movements. His phone was there _somewhere_. He just needed light.

Just a few minutes of light.


	3. Chapter 3

Sometimes, Bond wished he were just a bit more ordinary, at least in appearance. He intentionally kept an arm around Q’s shoulders, holding him close as the train jolted and clattered along the rails. He _loathed_ the train, but the rain had turned to thunder, and Q hadn’t wanted to risk the motorcycle, despite Bond’s driving skills. Since Bond wasn’t about to take his Jaguar anywhere near a half-legal concert in an abandoned warehouse and Q wouldn’t take a taxi for anything less than a life-or-death emergency, they were faced with the choice between skipping the concert or taking the train. Bond had actually suggested they forego the concert to find their own entertainment, but Q had run his hands over Bond’s tight jeans and whispered filthy promises of _later_ in his ears, and now here they were. With half of bloody London packed into their train car.

 _Without_ the entertainment of a brawl to distract Bond.

His nerves were jangling. He didn’t mind crowds for himself, but he had Q — the bloody MI6 Quartermaster, a prime target for attack, and _his boyfriend_ — with him, and if he didn’t get to hit someone very, very soon, he was... well, he was going to damned well find someone to hit.

But either London had become unexpectedly more civilised in recent weeks or Bond was just too bloody terrifying for anyone to start trouble. Sadly, one predator often recognised another, and the gangs of idiots looking to go after easy prey wouldn’t give him a second glance, even if he stripped Q naked and fucked him right there in the train car.

His arm tightened as _that_ thought filled his distracted, bloodthirsty mind, and he ducked his head to bite at Q’s throat.

Q’s adam’s apple bobbed under Bond’s mouth, and he could feel the vibration of Q’s laugh on his tongue. Though in the earliest stages of their relationship Q had been incredibly shy about public displays of affection, either Bond had worn him down or corrupted him, because he wasn’t shy now at all about wrapping his arms around Bond’s waist and pulling him in close.

“And here I thought you weren’t having a good time,” Q said quietly in Bond’s ear, hands dipping under Bond’s leather coat.

“To hear the news reports, the Tube’s full of criminals waiting to attack around every corner,” Bond complained. He felt movement at his back and stepped into Q, shielding him. “This is bloody _boring_.”

“If by criminals you mean the occasional harmless pickpocket,” Q said with a chuckle, scratching his fingers on Bond’s lower back over the thin cotton of his NIN T-shirt. “Post-concert stress. I don’t suppose I can hope that’s like post-mission stress?”

“You have no idea,” Bond said, struggling and failing to banish the image painted in his imagination: Q, bent over the awful plastic seats, trousers down just enough to expose his slender hips and arse. Or Q hanging onto the overhead bar while Bond teased, licking and sucking and threatening to stop if he let go. Fucking Q up against the doors, legs wrapped around Bond’s waist, back pressed to the glass.

Q gave him a considering look that rapidly turned wicked. He tugged Bond’s T-shirt up a scant few inches  —  just enough to expose the waistband of Bond’s jeans to Q’s inquisitive hands. Slowly enough to not jostle Bond’s coat  —  to avoid attracting attention, Bond knew  —  Q slid his hands between the waistbands of Bond’s jeans and pants and Bond’s skin. 

“Was it the dancing?” Q asked in a sweetly innocent voice. “We _did_ do a pretty good job of it.”

Despite the security risks, Bond closed his eyes, indulging for a few precious seconds, letting himself remember Q’s body, long limbs given grace and strength by the music. In the grubby anonymity of the concert venue, Q had tossed aside his inhibitions and writhed against Bond like a cat in heat, capturing the attention of anyone who happened to glance their way, male or female.

“One of these days,” he said, grabbing hold of the overhead bar as the train’s brakes squealed. He hugged Q close, balancing easily, and growled into Q’s ear, “One of these days, I’m going to steal a bloody train, just so I can fuck you here, underground, in your old territory.”

Q tipped his head to kiss Bond’s neck before running a hot tongue up to his ear, ending with a careful tug of teeth on Bond’s earlobe. “That could be fun,” he whispered. “Except, of course, trains quit running through _my_ stations years and decades ago. You might have to indulge in a little hiking to get where you’d need to go. I’d have to lead, of course  —  wearing tight, tight jeans and my old black grunge boots.”

Bond exhaled, fraying self-control already threatening to have him start something that they’d never be able to finish before some irritating PCSO interfered. “If we get off at the next stop and I find a hotel to fuck you, would you object?” he asked, hearing his voice go cold and calm and fully controlled, the way he got on a mission, when he was about to charge into enemy gunfire. It wasn’t fear — it was never fear — but that desperate need to do something stupid or risky or unplanned and prove that he could survive.

Q’s hands froze on Bond’s skin for a moment before delving deeper into his trousers. “No objection here,” he said in a low voice, scratching his fingers over the curve of Bond’s arse. “In fact, it’s Saturday night. We can go to a hotel, and explore the Underground tomorrow, if you want.” He leaned in to Bond’s other side, this time scratching his teeth along the small sliver of skin under the collar of Bond’s T-shirt. “I know some great”  —  he bit lightly on Bond’s collar  —  “places”  —  next he bit on Bond’s neck  —  “to fuck.” The last bite was just behind Bond’s ear.

For one brief, searing instant, rage threatened to overwhelm Bond — not at Q, but at the knowledge that sex hadn’t been solely for pleasure, then. Q had fucked for security and safety and drugs and food and protection. Bond forced in a breath, his arm crushing Q against his chest, and nodded, thinking that while he couldn’t take away those memories he could overwrite them.

“Yes,” he growled, kissing Q’s ear so gently that the touch was barely more than soft breath over Q’s skin.

Q hummed in pleasure, once again burying his face in Bond’s neck. “The hotels around here don’t have room service though, I hope you realise. We’ll have to stop somewhere if you want food or drinks to keep our energy levels up,” he added wickedly.

 

~~~

 

The light from the phone flooded the train car, and Q found himself able to breath again. Not deep, even breaths, but it was still _something_. Air flooded his lungs and the world started to right itself again as the spinning slowed and shadows became solid, identifiable objects.

There was no one here.

God, he was sick of this. 

Trains. The Underground. Places he’d thought he’d _never_ fear. Ever. The thought of it made him laugh a little, high-pitched and slightly hysterical though it may have been.

“It’s fine. I’m sorry. I’m fine,” he assured whoever was on the other side of the line. Danielle. James.

“Q?” Bond sounded strained and worried and _scared_. “Thank god. Are you all right? Are you hurt?”

“I was just thinking how stupid it is. Me. Trapped here. Afraid _here_.” Q looked around at the train car, a breathless laugh escaping him again. “Absurd, isn’t it?”

“No. No, it isn’t,” Bond said, relief heavy in his voice. “I’m coming for you, but you need to stay with me. Talk to me. Can you do that?”

“This is such a bunch of bullshit,” Q huffed. “Trains. I _like_ trains. Trusted them. Well, at least it wasn’t the actual machine’s fault. Outside interference. Bastards.” Q looked around for something, anything to distract him. He settled on pulling one of the boxes with nanobots in it towards him. He didn’t think about why he put it on his open left side, but let the case scan his thumbprint and accept his code. The lockers opened with a click, and Q gazed at the contents, trying to reclaim some the excitement he’d felt just hours  —  minutes?  —  earlier.

“What happened? Are you bleeding?”

Q reached up to touch his head, feeling the slow trickle of blood that hadn’t fully stopped yet. “Well, yes. But nothing new.” He brought his hand back down, noticing his knuckles for the first time since his panic attack. “Well, that’s not quite... nevermind. It’s fine.” With the light on, he still wasn’t quite fine, but he was close.

He looked at the nanobots thoughtfully. If he had a computer, he could take a stab at some quick and dirty programming to start a swarm that would give him some light.

And then get arrested for for cyberterrorism or whatever law the court martial guys at Baskerville would use to punish him for being a colossal idiot.

He shut the case again with a snap.

“Q, I need you to focus. Please.” Bond took a breath and asked, “How badly are you bleeding? Are you in pain? Dizzy? Don’t stand up.”

“It’s not bad, I don’t think. You know how head wounds are.” It throbbed like hell, and burned around the edges, but there was no point in telling Bond. He would just worry even more than he already was. Q looked down at the phone in his hand, down to twenty-six percent already. He had to extinguish it, _needed_ to extinguish it, but he couldn’t yet. Just a few more minutes. 

His eyes fell on a piece of metal that had been torn free from somewhere in the car, twisted and sharp and within reach. He stretched out to reach for it, wondering if it were sharp enough to carve something into the wall. “I’m sitting,” he promised.

“Good. All right. You’re safe, and I’m coming for you,” Bond assured him. “But you said something, and I need you to tell me. You said ‘they’ were coming for you. Who are ‘they’, love?”

Q’s gut twisted and he looked at the wall, desperately trying to come up with a design that would be interesting enough to hold his attention. Something he could draw in the dark, when he finally had enough courage to turn off the light on his phone. “You’ve seen all my most recent design sketches. Which one do you like the most? Scratching it into the wall will be an excellent diversion.”

“Your little cockroach bug, with the camera,” Bond said at once. “You’re going to make me twenty so I can unleash them in the bathroom when you’re showering, for when I’m out of the country.”

Q chuckled nervously. “That might be fun. Once I figure out how to keep them from tipping over under the weight of the camera, I’ll work on a 3D projector so you get the full experience. Water droplets and all.”

Twenty-four percent battery life. Q turned to the wall and started sketching the bug out as quickly as possible, and as deeply as possible, so he had something to follow when he turned out the light.

“I’d like that,” Bond said, his voice a bit strained. “Did you see someone at Baskerville? Someone you know?”

“No,” Q assured him, hands hovering over the phone. Twenty-two percent. “I wonder if they keep falling because they don’t have enough joints. I thought it was because I designed them with too many, but now I’m not so sure.”

“Was it someone on the train?” Bond asked. “Someone you recognised? Or maybe someone who reminded you of” — he hesitated as though struggling to find words — “someone else?”

“James,” Q said with a sigh. “I... it isn’t...” He closed his eyes for the briefest second. “It’s the dark. It’s not just some silly fear. Things... happen. In the dark.”

“I would never say it’s a silly fear, love,” Bond said gently. “I’m almost there. I can see the lights. They have the area cordoned off, so I may have to shoot anyone who tries to stop me. Don’t be alarmed.”

“I’m speaking with the emergency site supervisor now, 007,” Danielle interrupted.

“My second set of foster parents used to lock me in the attic,” Q said suddenly, before he could stop himself. He slammed the phone shut and took a deep breath before he tucked the phone away safely in his pocket. He moved his hand to the side wall, tracing the light sketch, keeping his back to the rear wall. If he told James and Danielle about that, maybe they wouldn’t ask about other things. One bad story was usually good enough to shut people up.

Q shook his head, angry at himself for for the uncharitable thought. These were two people Q actually cared about, and who cared about him. It wasn’t fair to take his frustration out on them.

“There were no lights,” he added.

He heard James take a deep breath; he suspected Danielle had muted her comms. “No one did this to you,” James told him. “This was an accident, and we’re going to get you out.”

“It’s just that they would leave me there, for hours and hours. And I’d get lost in my mind. And they’d grab me, and I never expected it. Never heard them coming.” He lifted the metal and starting re-tracing the lines. “Couldn’t see them, obviously. Couldn’t even tell if my eyes were open or closed, most of the time.”

“That won’t happen. You’ll know I’m coming. Christ, Q, when have you ever known me to be stealthy unless I’m killing someone or after you for sex?” Bond asked with a forced laugh.

“Obviously,” Q said with a huff, focusing on the lines and not how the darkness was creeping in again. “It’s just a matter of trained responses to stimuli. It wasn’t just them. There were other...” Q swallowed, raking lines into the wall. “The trained response was reinforced over time,” he said flatly, though it might have come out in a whisper. “Some like my foster parents. Some like Matt. Some... others.” The metal skipped out of its groove and scored a new line to the side of the bot sketch. “Six or eight joints on their legs, you think?”

Bond was silent for a few seconds. “If you put in eight joints, you might as well use pipe cleaners. What’s wrong with just a couple?”

Relief flooded through Q at the change in conversation. “They need to be able to compensate for the weight, and move with it without falling over. Right now they have four joints, and it’s just not working out. As funny as it is to watch them roll over dead, it’s pretty useless.”

“Make the feet bigger,” Bond proposed. Then, more quietly, he said, “Danielle, I need you to drop off the line. Give me five minutes of privacy. Block all recording and monitoring. Understand?”

After a moment, she asked, “Quartermaster?”

Q took a deep breath. “It’s fine. I’m sorry you had to... hear me, like this.”

“I’ve heard worse — and from the other one on this line,” she said. “HQ dark, five minutes.”

Bond exhaled. “You can give me names, Q,” he said grimly. “You’ll never have to even think of them again.”

“I don’t,” Q lied. He didn’t think about them much at all  —  until the lights went out and he had to remind himself it didn’t matter anymore. _They_ didn’t matter anymore. “It won’t help. It’s just a trained response to stimuli,” he repeated. “I really need to get out of the fucking dark, James.”

“I’m coming for you,” he repeated. “Did they —”

Whatever Bond said next was lost under the sudden, dull roar of an explosion close enough to rock the car.

Q grabbed onto the nanobot case and held tight, hoping like hell the explosion would be enough to blow something loose. To his incredible disappointment, nothing in particular happened after the noise of it receded. 

“Well, that can’t be good,” he said, though he doubted he actually sounded disappointed.

“What? Did something happen?” Bond demanded sharply.

“Another explosion. Too far away to be useful.” Q sighed. “You can tell me all about it when you get here.”


	4. Chapter 4

_“Ow!”_ Bond snapped, hopping ungracefully back a step so he could brace a hand on the wall. The office looked like an electronics store had exploded all over the floor. He picked up his foot and pried out the now-bent prongs of a small chip. The ends of three prongs were bloody, which didn’t bode well for the underside of his foot. Through gritted teeth, he asked, “This wasn’t essential, was it?”

Q glanced up from his work on the knife cuff to look at what had caught Bond’s attention. He wore a magnification visor, and his eyes were comically huge behind the lens. “Oh. Sorry.” He picked his way to where Bond was leaning against the wall and took the chip out of his hand. “Nope. Not essential. Well, yes essential, but I have many more.” He kissed Bond on the cheek and went back to his desk.

Bond twisted his leg up, hooking a hand around his ankle, and stared at the bloody spots. “Well, good thing you have more,” he said, wondering if Q had missed the fact that he was bleeding.

“Aw,” Q said with a low chuckle. He set everything down on the desk and yanked open the top drawer. He pulled out a box of neon-coloured plasters and held it up. “Blue, orange, red, or yellow?”

“You can’t put a plaster on the bottom of your foot. Coloured? Really?” he asked, checking for clearance before he set his foot down. It stung all the way up to his ankle, but he ignored it. Mostly. Why the fuck was it he could get shot and _not notice_ , but a little stick from a splinter or IC and he wanted to go sit on the sofa and whinge for attention?

“Someone is a little grumpy tonight,” Q said, staring up at Bond, blinking like a cartoon character behind the visor. Stubbornly refusing to drop the box of plasters, he walked back to Bond and pulled him into a hug, turning his head to the side to avoid crushing his face. “I’m sure I can make you feel better.”

“Don’t you have a hobby that involves fewer” — Bond waved his free hand at the floor — “caltrops?”

Q yanked the visor off, tossed it onto the rarely-used office chair, and kissed Bond’s neck. “Does having sex with you count?”

“With _caltrops_? Not unless you want to be on the bottom,” Bond complained against Q’s disarrayed hair. “I’d no idea that you’d want sex toys from an electronics warehouse, or I would’ve broken into one sooner.”

Q hummed but didn’t say anything. He reached up to hook his arms together behind Bond’s back and pressed against Bond, just breathing in rhythm with him. “Sex toys,” he finally said, quietly and thoughtfully. “That’s one thing I haven’t tried yet. I wonder...”

“Ones with less in the way of sharp bits,” he strongly hinted, wondering if it would be ridiculous to suggest they move this to the bathroom, where there was a topical anaesthetic in the first aid kit. Or maybe Q could just shoot him in the foot; _then_ it wouldn’t hurt.

“Sharp bits on a sex toy?” Q said, leaning back to look at Bond. “Not that I know much about them, but I imagine that’s probably a design flaw.” He frowned as he watched Bond’s face. “It actually hurts?” he asked with surprise.

“Of course not,” Bond lied bluntly. “This really isn’t safe, though. What if _you_ got hurt?”

Q stepped back from Bond. He looked down at his bare feet, his Spiderman pyjama bottoms, his bare chest. “Now you’re asking?” he said with a chuckle. He took Bond by the hand and started dragging him towards the bathroom. “Besides, if it doesn’t bite, it’s probably not interesting.”

Ignoring the way his foot was stinging, Bond pulled Q off his feet, catching him with an arm under his legs, the other around his back. Q shouted in alarm, throwing his arms around Bond’s neck and almost catching Bond’s nose with an elbow in the process. “I wouldn’t want you stepping on anything,” he explained innocently, carrying Q — carefully — out of the danger zone. “We need a safer hobby for you.”

Q snorted. “Safe is boring. Honestly, 007,” he said, with an emphasis on the double o. “You’re one to talk.”

“Really,” Bond said archly, looking at the slender body in his arms. A hundred ways to push the boundaries of ‘safe’ came to mind — things he’d done and things he’d considered and things he’d never tried — but to his surprise, every one of them felt _wrong_ with Q. His arms tightened as he took care to turn sideways as he got Q through the doorway and out into the hall, careful not to even brush against the doorjamb. His instinct was to _protect_ Q, not to chase the thrill of adrenaline with him.

“Well, what would you rather I made? A robot dog to fetch your slippers, or a pocket-sized EMP that would kill all electronic communications for a square mile?”

“I thought we were talking about sex toys,” Bond hinted. Steadfastly refusing to limp down the hallway, he ignored the little shocks of pain from his foot and nudged at Q’s hair with his nose, brushing it aside. “Or did I miss a change in the conversation?”

Q sighed, snuggling into Bond’s body. “To be used on you, maybe. I don’t want metal inside my body. But I’m open to suggestions for things you’d like.”

“Metal? _Metal?_ ” Bond resisted the temptation to put Q down, though he did stop in his tracks — and promptly shifted most of his weight to his uninjured foot. “You’d best be referring to — No. Actually, no. I have to draw the line somewhere, and a sex toy that can double as a weapon is crossing that line.” He huffed into Q’s hair and said, “You’re taking the mad scientist role a bit too seriously.”

“Whether I’m mad or not is open to interpretation, but I’m not a scientist. I’m an engineer. What else would I use? I have tools to shape metal, but not plastic.” He yawned, arms tightening around Bond. “Unless you mean something more like the cuffs.”

Bond didn’t bother to hide his interest in that idea. “What did you have in mind?” he asked curiously as he started moving again.

“I didn’t,” Q said quietly, eyes growing heavy as Bond carried him to the bedroom. “The whole sex toy thing was your idea, not mine. I was happy with my knife cuff. You’re the one who decided it wasn’t safe enough. How is your foot?”

“I never said the knife cuff wasn’t safe. I said you making metal sex toys —” Realising the absurdity of what he was saying, Bond laughed and gave Q a gentle toss onto the bed. He followed quickly, getting up on his hands and knees to chase Q towards the headboard. He pounced only when Q was comfortably up by the pillows, where he pinned Q to the mattress and grinned down at him, forgetting about his wounded foot.

“I’m tired and compliant,” Q hinted, shifting suggestively under Bond’s body. “Fun and slow and gentle tonight, with no sex toys or cuffs  —  just you and me. How’s that sound? Safe enough for us?”

“Or I could just give you a back massage and let you fall asleep,” Bond offered, knowing that Q wasn’t one to yawn unnecessarily. He had the metabolism of a hummingbird — always on, except when he crashed. And when that happened, he crashed _hard_.

“Oh god,” Q hummed happily, rolling onto his stomach. “Back massage. Yes please. I’ll make it up to you later.”

“I’ll get the oil. Turn down the lights,” Bond said, leaving it to Q if he wanted every light in the bedroom left on, or if he’d settle for just his bedside lamp as he sometimes did. Bond rolled off the bed and walked — with only a hint of a limp — to the bathroom. He didn’t hear Q move at all, which meant both bedside lamps and the overhead light would stay on. A part of Bond worried at Q’s aversion to darkness, but he’d decided long ago that it didn’t matter. To hell with what Psych might say about it. This was a private matter between Q, Bond, and the electricity statement, and that was on auto-pay.

He got the oil and slid back into bed carefully. When Q didn’t react, he leaned over and saw his eyes had fallen closed. The hint of tension in his forehead was gone, the lines at the corners of his eyes smoothed out.

Carefully, Bond worked Q’s glasses off. He reached over to set them on the bedside table, where Q would look for them in the morning, and put the bottle of oil beside them. Then he pulled up the blankets and wrapped an arm around Q, listening to his slow, shallow breathing. When he closed his eyes, he could still see the bright bedroom lights, and he wondered if Q’s sleeping mind took comfort from the glow.

His arm tightened as he thought of a thousand terrible reasons why a grown man would need to sleep with the lights on, and he privately resolved — not for the first time — to track down and kill everyone who’d ever contributed to his fear of the dark.

Slowly.

 

~~~

 

Q paced through the car, the light on his cell glowing faintly in the dark. He’d tinkered with the settings to keep the light output minimal to slow the draining of the battery, but it only helped a little. He had, at most, twenty minutes left.

Twenty minutes for Bond to find him. 

He wondered if he should tell Bond about that tiny little deadline. It took him mere moments to dismiss the idea  —  Bond was already strained enough as it was. He didn’t need a countdown to Q’s eventual collapse.

“Are they letting you through?” he asked. “Do you know what the explosion was?”

“They’re assessing the situation, I’m certain,” Bond said evenly. His voice was strained in a new way; he was running. “I’m looking —”

“007,” Danielle interrupted, coming back onto the line. “We have reports that two Met officers are down. Can you confirm?”

“Down?”

“Gunshot wounds. No survivors.”

“Give me a location.”

“I’m tracking you now. Hold.”

“Huh,” Q said speculatively. “They’re after me? They’re after me. Or the nanotech. Probably the nanotech.” He walked back up to the doors, peering out through the crack, desperately wishing he could see something. Anything. At this point he didn’t actually care of it were Bond or an enemy agent who managed to free Q. He just wanted out. Now.

“They’re not going to get you,” Bond said grimly.

“Maybe you could just let them clear the debris with their explosions, then shoot them when they crawl out of the hold,” Q suggested.

“I’m not letting them blast their way to you,” Bond snapped. “I’ll bloody well kill all of them —”

“Bond? Are you onsite?” It was Tanner, his voice strained and tense.

“I’m ducking the barrier — Going silent for a moment while I deal with the Met.”

Tanner let out an exasperated sigh. “Quartermaster? Are _you_ there?”

_Fucking hell_. Tanner was almost the last person in the world Q wanted to deal with at the moment. “Tanner,” he replied in his very best imitation of stern Quartermaster.

“Thank god. We can’t raise your guards. Are you with them?”

“No,” Q said, staring at the light on his mobile, concentrating on piecing together the events before the explosion. They were sketchy at best, but he didn’t remember walking past them to get here  —  to look at his new toys from Baskerville. “They were in the car in front of me.”

“Where you were —”

“Sir,” Danielle interrupted sharply.

“There was no access to the rear car from the back and the guards had the front,” Q defended, having absolutely no patience for Tanner’s crap. “There was absolutely no reason for me not to check on my tech.”

“Sir,” Danielle repeated, only this time, it was more gentle; she was speaking to Q. “From what we can determine, the blast was directly over the car where the guards were.”

“Well, shit,” Q said quietly, but with feeling. That didn’t seem fair at all  —  they died for following orders and Q lived for ignoring them. “None of them survived?” he prodded.

“They aren’t responding, and the train car is substantially damaged,” Danielle said delicately. “The site is secure —”

“Q?” Bond interrupted, coming back online.

“007?” Q asked carefully. “Tanner has joined the conversation,” he warned.

“Report. Anyone.”

“Hostiles confirmed, two friendlies down,” Danielle said at once. “The attack was centred over the personnel car, 007.”

For a long moment, Bond was absolutely, dangerously silent. Then he said, “Acknowledged.”

“Hostiles have _not_ been neutralised.”

“They fucking will be,” Bond said coldly. “I’m going in.”

“I thought the site supervisor said it’s not safe,” Tanner objected.

Pointedly, Bond didn’t answer.

“They’re trying to get to me,” Q said again. “You might let them clear the way before you neutralise them,” he suggested again. “Sounds like they’re pretty well organised. Might save you some trouble.”

“I am _not_ letting any bloody —”

_“James!”_ Danielle snapped.

“He’s _mine_ ,” Bond snarled right back at her — and he _never_ yelled at Danielle.

“James,” Q started calmly. “You shouldn’t...”

But that was as far as he got before the light on his phone went out. More correctly, Q realised, the battery had finally died. 

Q looked down as the useless mobile in his hands. “Fuck.”

“What? What is it?”

“Mobile’s battery died,” Q said flatly. He reached out to feel for the wall, needing to anchor himself in his location. He was only a few steps from the little nook he’d set up for himself, which protected him on most sides, but he didn’t quite need to go there yet.

“Damn —” Bond started, before he cut off. “Q.”

“There’s no sense going through the blast site, 007,” Danielle said evenly. “I’m pulling up a map of nearby — _Oh_.”

“What’s that?” Tanner demanded. “What is that? Can we get to him through there?”

“It’s a flood control tunnel, sir,” Danielle said, her voice perfectly neutral and full of polite, respectful contempt. “And with the rain we’ve been having, there’ll be no air in there at all.”

“Oh, Christ,” Tanner said softly. “That’s right near —”

“Sir,” she interrupted, too late, as Q already put two and two together. As if dying alone in the dark weren’t bad enough, now it would be death by _drowning_.

Q braced both hands against the train car wall and let his head thump as it fell against it. The movement sent shocks of pain reverberating through his skull, but the gasp turned into laughter before it could break free.

“I’m going to die trapped, alone, in the dark, by drowning?” he said, laughing quietly, if hysterically, under his breath. “How much do these people hate me?”

“You are _not going to die_ ,” Bond said emphatically. “If I have to kill everyone in all of fucking London to save you, I will.”

“Let’s try and avoid that,” Danielle said, as another explosion jolted the train car, this one violently enough to overturn one of the stacks of crates. It was closer — not _at_ the car, but close enough.

Q laughed again. “That was _close_ ,” he said, looking at the crates. “I’m not armed. I’m injured. What the hell am I supposed to do when they get here?”

“Nothing. I’m going to get there first,” Bond said. “Going silent. Q — _I will come for you_.”

“Should I hide the printer?” Q paced the car, darkness trapping again. “Not that I can because I can’t see anything.” In an act that wasn’t totally rational, but it made Q feel better anyway, he grabbed the second box of nanobots and dragged it back to his corner. By feeling around, he quickly located the first box, and he set the other one on top of it.

Then he sat down, breathed, and waited.

James was coming for him.

 

~~~

 

There were two more explosions, and a small corner of Q’s mind was able to identify them as focused charges. These weren’t meant to destroy, but to quickly, surgically break through reinforced concrete. They couldn’t be underwater — the shockwave would’ve injured or killed anyone in the tunnel — but this was London, where humans had been digging and tunneling for two thousand years, since before the Romans had come. For every tunnel that was mapped and planned, there were a dozen more, as Q knew all too well.

Then he heard the higher, sharper sound of gunfire. The tunnels made each shot echo like machine gun bursts, though it wasn’t comfortingly loud and close. Q had never minded the sound of gunfire  —  it was more or less a soothing background noise to him at this point in his life. If he heard gunfire over the earwig while Bond was on a mission, that meant Bond was still alive and shooting. It was when silence reigned that he got nervous, unwilling to face the question of why no one was bothering anymore. 

The silence was deafening when the shots ceased. For once, Q wasn’t the guardian angel of the mission, overlooking everything, able to see every angle, able to direct every move. He was the damn _target_ , as helpless as any of them had ever been. If it weren’t for the overwhelming fear (had Bond been shot? had the attackers all died? had everyone left to fight somewhere else? was Q forgotten?), Q might have found some sympathy for the others on what would normally be the opposite end of the comm lines.

But now he trembled in the dark, waiting for some sign that he wouldn’t have to stay here much longer.

“Threats eliminated,” was the first thing he heard Bond say after an eternity of silence.

“Threats eliminated,” Q repeated as he stood from his cozy, protected little corner. _Threats_ didn’t seem to be quite the right word to him  —  they had been trying to get him out, after all. The _only_ ones trying as far as Q could tell. If they had been left to their own devices for just a little longer, Q would be out of the car and, if not in the sunlight, then at least in dull glow of the Underground’s sweeping electric lights.

“What are you doing!” Q finally snapped, yelling into the train car, heedless of the winces he knew he must have been soliciting from anyone unfortunate enough to be on the other end of the earwig. “How do you know they were threats? They were the _only_ ones trying to get me out! What would it have taken? Ten minutes? Five? I could have been out of here!”

It wasn’t Bond who answered, but Tanner: “You know you’re too valuable to take that risk, Q. They would’ve taken you along with the tech.”

“I don’t care!” Q shouted, so far beyond a willingness to remain professional that it could have been Mallory on the other end of the comm and he wouldn’t have cared. It didn’t help that Tanner was _Tanner_ , of course  —  the truce between them hadn’t faltered since its early establishment, but it had never evolved into anything resembling friendship. Tanner was a cold, ruthless bastard, and Q knew damn well he’d rather Q were shot than end up in enemy hands.

“We’re in London. With 007. There isn’t anywhere they could have gone, Tanner!” Q wanted to pick up and throw something, but he couldn’t see. The dark was crushing, pressing in on him, whispering about the inevitability of being left alone in it. Q could swear he heard the soft rustle of jeans from someone moving in the car, even though he logically knew it wasn’t possible. The past and the present started to overlap each other, and without something to anchor him, Q felt himself slipping into the memories. “You should have let them get me out,” he said more quietly, trying to breathe through the crushing panic.

“It was _my_ decision,” Bond said, his voice coolly professional. “I’m coming for — just stay — what we have onsite.”

“No,” Q whispered in horror as he realised what was happening. His only lifeline to Bond, to Danielle, to the outside world, was being cut off. 

The battery to his earwig was dying.

“No, no, no,” Q started to chant, pacing the car, before he stopped talking completely. If he didn’t talk, maybe the lack of sound to transmit would extend the life of the battery. 

It had to. _It had to_. He couldn’t be down here with only silence. It would kill him.

“My battery,” he whispered. He ran a quick calculation based on how long he’d been using it today, and how charged it was before he’d put it in his ear. The math appalled him, and he couldn’t keep the vocal evidence of that out of his voice as he said, “ETD, two minutes.”

Bond cursed, harsh and low. “Acknowledged,” he said, his voice cold and emotionless.

One minute forty-five seconds later, Bond spoke again: “I’m coming for you. I swear —”


	5. Chapter 5

_Light_.

He could see it, but it took him a long minute to process. He had been so lost that it took more than just the explosion of brightness to bring him back  —  he still felt the hands on him, the voices in his ears, the tug in his hair that wanted to drag him away. Drag him down.

Even indirect, the light was blinding and bright, but he couldn’t bring himself to cover his eyes. It was _light_.

It came closer, flicking up over him before dipping low, aimed at his feet. His eyes teared and stung, hurting all the way into his brain, but he forced them to stay open. He heard a noise — a voice, deep and low — but all he knew was that it was _light_ and it was _here_. Words didn’t matter.

He reached as if to hold it. He caught a hand instead, a hand he slapped away to grab at the light. Then, with another soft murmur, the light was in his hands, cold metal covered with grit and dust and dirt. He clutched it, and he watched as the light stayed with him, under his control, wherever he wanted it.

 _Light_.

He tipped it up, into blue eyes. After a flinch and blink, they opened and looked directly at him.

“Q.”

Q.

Not Jack.

“You’re hurt, Q. I need to touch you. Can I touch you?”

Q looked down into the bulb, letting it sear into his vision for a moment of literally blinding relief. Then he shone it around the carriage, aiming in every nook and cranny, banishing every shadow in turn. The whispers died out, the sensation of hands on his body slowly vanished; his skull didn’t stop stinging but he realised it was from the injury, not from hands.

Finally he brought the light back to the the person in front of him, shining it in his face again. 

 _James_.

James wanted to touch him. He didn’t know if he could bear it yet.

“I...” he started to say, but it hurt. It actually _hurt_ , and it took Q far longer than it should have to remember that he’d spent much of the time between his earwig being cut off to now screaming. He pressed a hand to his throat and tried to clear it. It didn’t do any good, of course, except to make the tears start to fall faster in protest of aggravating the rawness. “I can’t...” he tried again, and shook his head.

“Fuck,” James whispered. He put out his hands and Q saw he was bleeding and cut up. His shirt was torn and his forearms were scratched under the ripped cloth. “All right. You touch me, if you can. I won’t do anything you don’t want me to do, but you’ve hit your head. I need to see if you’re still bleeding. Can you guide my hands?”

Q aimed the light at James’ hands, trying to will himself into action. It was James, he told himself. No one else. Just James. But he couldn’t do it  —  he couldn’t bring himself to reach out and touch the hands yet.

Maybe if he could see both James’ hands and face at the same time, that would help, he thought. It would remove the instinctive flinch, the worry about what was hidden in the darkness beyond the hands he could see but the face he couldn’t. He gripped the torch tightly, looking around, trying to come up with a solution.

The nanotech boxes. He could set the torch in between the nanotech boxes, which would hold it and allowing it to fill most of the carriage. He’d have to leave the safety of his corner, but James probably would want him to, anyway.

“Back,” he tried to say, though he didn’t know if the broken whisper that came out was actually intelligible.

After a moment, James rose from his crouch and stepped back. The movement was startling; Q’s heart thudded against his ribs, and he followed the movement with his torch until James was on the far side of the rail carriage. He was in his dark grey trousers — the ones from the suit he’d been wearing this morning — but the ruined cotton jumper was from the Met, as was the body armour velcroed over it. Two of the velcro straps were threaded around his shoulder holster, keeping his Walther roughly where it belonged, low against the left side of his ribs.

“I’ll stay here,” James said very calmly, though his eyes were a little wild. “Please, Q. Don’t move. I don’t want you to fall and hit your head again.”

Q waited until James stopped moving, waited until his heart slowed again and he could feel his fingers and toes again. He couldn’t remember when sensation had vanished from them, but now the tips tingled and burned as circulation started to return. 

With a small turn, Q tucked the torch in between the two boxes. He aimed it down the length of the carriage so the soft diffusion filled every possible corner. It illuminated James completely, and Q slowly started to feel rationality return. 

Keeping one hand on the torch for as long as possible, Q shuffled forward on his knees so he wouldn’t have to stand. He didn’t know which idea scared him more: the one where he’d stand only to fall over and hurt himself further, or the one where he’d stand only to fall over and be caught, in a jarring rush, by James. Both sounded equally horrifying. 

Once he was as far as he could go from the safety of his nook without letting go of the torch, he nodded. “Okay,” he called quietly in his strained, ruined voice.

James approached with slow, careful steps. When he was two metres away, he crouched down and held out both hands. “Should I come closer? Just nod if you want me to — or you can come to me.”

Q couldn’t let go of the torch. What if it dropped and rolled away while James was looking at his head? What if the batteries were knocked loose and Q and James couldn’t find the torch again in the darkness? Q didn’t think he could take it. So he nodded, one hand still carefully on the torch, and waited.

James moved again, shuffling towards him. When he was a metre away, he went from a crouch to his knees, flattening one hand on the floor of the train carriage so he could reach out with the other. “Touch my hand, Q.”

A metre wasn’t that far, but it felt like an eternity to reach. He had to switch hands, moving his left to the light so he could reach with his right. At first he just brushed his fingers along the knuckles, but the sensation of warm skin to warm skin was almost repulsive. He flinched and pulled his hand back, reminding himself it was just James.

“All right,” James said, pulling his hand away slowly. He sat back on his heels and stuck a hand under the body armour, loosening one of the velcro straps with a slow ripping sound, so slow that Q could almost hear each individual hook release. James took out a pair of torn, half-destroyed gloves — they were brown, not black, with mesh on the back. Shooting gloves, Q recognised, the type with padding on the palm and slightly tacky fabric for a strong grip. These looked like they’d been through a food processor, but James pulled them on anyway, over his bloody fingers.

Then he crawled forward again, holding out his gloved hand.

This time, when Q reached out to touch James’ hand, there was no repulsion. The gloves were cool and synthetic, and Q tried to communicate his gratitude with his expression since his voice was useless. He guided James’ hand to his hair and let go, relaxing under the familiar touch as James slowly began to search, feeling his scalp.

“This might hurt a little, if you’re bruised. If it hurts a lot, you _must_ tell me. Even if you have to hit me, that’s fine,” he said. “As soon as I know it’s safe to move you, I can take you out of here. All right?”

Q nodded. “All right,” he forced himself to say, the wrecked words disturbing to his own ears. He felt foolish, behaving like this, diminished to a trembling little mouse and clinging to a bloody torch, but there was absolutely nothing he could do about it. He kept his eyes locked on James’ face as he waited for the blissful moment when James told him they could go.

It felt like forever, though Q knew that it couldn’t have been more than a few minutes. Finally, _finally_ James said, “The bleeding’s stopped. Will you let me help you stand? I don’t want you to fall. I can stand first, and you can take my hands.”

Q shook his head, irrational fear coursing through him. He couldn’t do it  —  kneel on the floor while James stood and maybe stepped away from him. “Together,” he insisted. He pulled the torch free from the boxes, and reached out, threading his fingers through James’ gloved ones.

“Slowly,” James said, and moved first one foot out from under himself, then the other, so he could start to rise. He stopped when Q hesitated, and only resumed moving when Q stood, placing his hand — still holding the torch — on the boxes for balance.

When they were upright, James said, “Good, Q. If you get dizzy, just sit down. I won’t let go of you, I promise. Whenever you’re ready, let’s start to walk. We’ll need to do a bit of climbing, but I have a rope and a harness for you. Whenever you’re ready.”

Finally standing, the torch in his hand, James in front of him, Q felt his equilibrium start to return. He stared at Bond for a long, silent moment before he stepped into him, gripping him in a crushing hug. The body armour wasn’t altogether unfamiliar, only new to his life with James. By itself, the armour was deeply comforting — as was the presence of the shoulder harness and gun.

“I was so afraid,” he managed, shuddering against James.

“I will always find you,” James said quietly, putting one arm around Q’s shoulders as though worried about trapping him. He pressed his lips to Q’s cheek. “God, I was terrified —” He cut off with a sharp, deep inhale. “Tell me you’re back. Please.”

Q thought about what still had to happen. Escaping the rail carriage. Being looked over by emergency services. Reporting to Mallory. Apologizing to Danielle. Even just the _thought_ of it was overwhelming, and he could feel himself start to panic again at being touched by strangers. 

“I’m trying,” he said instead of giving false promises.

After a tense, quiet moment, James asked, “Do you need — What do you need me to do?”

“I don’t want anyone to touch me,” he said, though he tightened his arms around James to prove he was the exception.

“No one will touch you. I promise. I can make certain you’re not injured.” James kissed him again. “Do you want me to take you home?”

“Oh god,” Q whispered, body sagging against James’ in relief. “Yes, please.” Q wanted nothing more than their flat  —  where Q knew every corner, every light switch, every squeaky floorboard. He wanted to curl up with James for a month and not do anything but lie there, listening to his heartbeat and the sound of him breathing. With every light in the flat on and every window open. 

“It’s still storming outside. Do you want me to drive, or shall we walk?” James offered, though they might be kilometres from home.

“You can drive as fast as you want,” Q promised, burying his face against the kevlar. He swallowed against the pain in his throat and the threat of tears, ready to be out of the bloody rail carriage as fast as humanly possible.

He finally allowed himself to be led to where a climbing rope was draped over the ruined front end of the carriage. The harness on the floor was bright yellow with silver reflective squares sewn to it. Without fully letting go of Q, James got the harness around his legs and waist and chest. He pulled it tight, checking after each strap to see if it hurt.

“I want you to go up first, and I can brace you,” James said as he wove the rope through the carabiner in the centre of the harness. “All right? You’ll need to put down the torch and feel your way along the rope, but I’ll be right behind you. We can go as slowly as you need.”

Q hesitated only long enough to realise that there was no threat  —  including the temporary loss of the torch or the brief manhandling by strangers  —  that could keep him in the carriage for a moment longer. He wanted to tell Bond that he didn’t want to go slow  —  in fact, he wanted the opposite  —  but his voice seemed to have fled him again in anticipation of what had to happen next. It was probably just as well, he decided; his voice was too raw to keep tormenting with unnecessary words. He reached up to grip the rope and, suddenly very thankful for the extra time he’d spent in the MI6 gym at James’ insistence, started making his way up the rope.

So he climbed, occasionally accidentally kicking James whenever he got too close, but James never once complained or tried to stop him. He stayed right below Q’s feet, reaching up to touch his leg or give him a boost whenever necessary, and soon Q had crawled out from under the final overhanging slab of asphalt and into the rain.

He heard shouts from above, but James said, “Tanner!” A moment later, the shouts overhead fell silent. Then James said more quietly, “Clear a corridor. Get me a car. If anyone comes within twenty feet of Q, I’m shooting to kill.”

An earwig, Q realised. He wanted to close his eyes in shame at everything they must have heard, everything they must be thinking, but the most he could do was keep his eyes down. He climbed up and out of the hole that stretched across the width of the street. There were a few destroyed cars nearby, and Q realised that they must have packed a lorry with explosives and shaped the charge to blow down. Or maybe they’d gained access to a sewer tunnel and the blast had destabilised the foundation below the street. He actually had no idea how streets were built in London, but considering the theories of the blast occupied his mind.

Then he was on the surface and out of the hole, though Bond kept a hand on his harness and pulled Q a good four metres away before he stopped to unbuckle the straps. By then they were both soaked and Q was starting to shiver, though it was more from reaction and shock than the cold.

“Your coat!” Bond shouted at someone. “Toss it here!”

He put an arm around Q’s shoulders and pulled him close seconds before something loud, with a plasticky rustle, slapped into the street a few feet away. Bond’s hand went from Q’s shoulders to his hand. He didn’t lose physical contact as he picked up what proved to be a yellow reflective fireman’s jacket, which he draped around Q.

“All right?”

Q nodded, keeping his eyes on the ground still to avoid accidental eye contact with anyone he might know. He would be fine, Q told himself. Just a few days to recover, and he’d be back to MI6’s youngest Quartermaster. But for now, he was still too close to _Jack_ to be seen by anyone who didn’t know that about him. As much as he wanted to, he didn’t cling to James, either  —  it felt important to stand straight and strong without support.

Still, James stayed only inches away as he led Q to the safety barricades, where very familiar military guards kept the rescue personnel at bay. The area was cordoned off for some distance in all directions. It wouldn’t stop the press or social media — a decent mobile had a camera that could zoom in far enough to get pictures of Q and James, though the evening’s poor light would interfere with quality. All that mattered now, though, was keeping everyone but James physically distant.

They didn’t go to James’ car but to a fairly standard black MI6 sedan. Q recognised the field agent who tossed James the keys, but no one said anything. James opened the passenger door, got Q inside, and then went around to the driver’s side.

Then they were inside, and James started the engine, turned on the heater, and searched the radio stations for Q’s favourite — an emergency measure for the days when he didn’t have his mobile or iPod.

The familiar strains of hip hop filled the car, and Q reached over to take James’ still-gloved hand. Then he realised that the sun had finally just set, hidden behind the London skyline, and it was dark. He let go of James’ hand and turned on the overhead lights in the car, both in the front and in the middle. He knew the reflection in the windscreen bothered some people, but he didn’t think it was anything James couldn’t handle.  The he reached over for James’ hand again, letting the comforting familiarity relax him.

He was safe.

 

~~~

 

Outwardly, Bond was perfectly calm and collected. He left the MI6 car in guest parking at his flat, dropped off the keys at the concierge’s desk, and escorted Q upstairs as if it were perfectly normal for them to come home with Q wearing a fireman’s coat, hair soaked with blood, and Bond looking as if he’d been in a fight with a train — which was grimly accurate.

Of course, for what they’d paid for the flat and the maintenance fees, they could’ve been wearing full HAZMAT gear and the doorman wouldn’t have blinked.

Q was silent for the trip up the lift. As soon as the doors closed, he was in Bond’s arms again, quiet, trembling, and utterly unrelenting in his grip. “You’re safe,” Bond whispered, wishing he had any idea what to do or how to comfort Q. “You’re safe, love.”

Q nodded, wet hair rasping against the cotton jumper, but he didn’t say anything. He stared down at the floor, unmoving and silent, for the rest of the ride up. Bond wanted to hear his voice — to find a way to make him actually answer and tell Bond that he really was all right. Even a hint would help. Anything but this clinging, trembling silence that just reinforced the idea that Bond was the wrong person to be helping him through this. Q needed someone experienced in trauma recovery — not a half-mad soldier whose idea of recovery started with drink and ended with painkillers and self-destructive sex with strangers.

But with no idea of what to say or do, Bond could only hold Q close until the lift doors opened. He guided Q to their flat, where he unlocked the door with the keycode Q had programmed. Then he brought Q inside, automatically switching on the foyer light, and let go so he could engage every lock on the reinforced door.

Q stood in the foyer for a brief, and what looked like indecisive, moment. He hovered near James while he locked the door. Finally Q drifted away to the light switch in the hall near the living room and flipped every one on. Then he walked back into the living room itself and turned on the lamps that weren’t controlled by the switches.

Then he headed to the entertainment center and turned on the stereo. Bond preemptively winced, expecting Q to turn rap on at the highest levels, but was surprised when Q chose from Bond’s music collection instead, settling on Tom Petty.

Bond stripped off the holster and the borrowed kevlar vest. The vest went on the floor; the holster went back over his shoulder, a loose drape of straps that let him keep the weapon close at hand. Then he walked over to Q, though he stopped himself from touching, remembering how he’d flinched in the rail carriage. Instead, he asked, “What can I do?”

“Can we take a bath?” Q whispered, voice still ragged.

Relieved, Bond nodded, holding out his hands for Q. He still wore the borrowed gloves one of the PCSOs had pressed on him before he’d gone down into the rubble. Even with their protection, he was torn up and bloodied, but they’d probably saved him from needing stitches.

“Do you want to come with me, or should I go fill the tub?” he asked, unwilling to leave him alone for even a few minutes, unless that was what Q wanted.

Q narrowed his eyes in an expression that was familiar — especially when Q said, “Stay here? Alone?” Bond realised it was the same look, same word, from the first time he had brought Q to his flat, almost a year ago now. Q wrapped his hands around Bond’s wrist and held tight.

Bond took a step towards Q. When Q didn’t flinch, he took another step so he could kiss Q’s forehead. “No. Not alone. Stay with me,” he said, covering Q’s hands with his own, so he could lead Q into the master bathroom.

He let Q hold his wrist while he started the tub filling with hot water. He was tempted to pour in soap, but he didn’t know if Q had any cuts other than the one on his head. So instead he turned and slowly lifted a hand to touch Q’s face, asking, “Will you let me undress you?”

Q’s eyes widened at the suggestion, but he quickly suppressed the reaction. He nodded, then looked down at Bond’s hands. He sat on the edge of the tub, cradled Bond’s right hand in his, and started pulling the glove off. He was obviously trying to be very careful not to disturb any of the scabs, but it was an impossible task. “Sorry,” he whispered as he pulled the glove free, reopening some of the cuts in the process.

“It’s fine,” Bond assured him, not even feeling the sting of the wounds. He let Q switch hands before he gave Q a faint smile and said, “You’re going to be uncomfortable, wearing that coat in the bath. Though you do make an adorable fireman.”

Q looked up at Bond after he finished removing the second glove and faintly returned Bond’s smile. “We’ll have to keep it, then,” he replied in his cracked voice. “Taking it off is your job, though.”

Slowly, Bond lifted his hands to the jacket and gently eased it off Q’s shoulders. “Are you hurt anywhere else?” he asked, supporting the jacket as he lowered it so that Q didn’t have to move his arms at all.

Q shook his head, then stopped as he looked down at his own hand. He lifted it up to reveal torn skin over the knuckles. “We match.”

For one instant, a snapshot-flash of memory replaced Q with Vesper, blood on both their hands, steam clouding the air around them. Bond dropped the jacket and took tight hold of Q’s hand, looking into his eyes. Q needed him to be strong, but he’d been strong for the hours it had taken to rescue Q — hours in which Bond had no idea if he’d find his lover or a corpse or no trace of him at all.

“James?” Q whispered, stretching up to bring his free hand to Bond’s face. His eyes widened again as he took in Bond’s expression, and he brushed his thumb along the line of Bond’s jaw. “It’s okay. We’re okay.” He shifted slightly so he wouldn’t fall off the narrow edge of the tub and leaned forward to press his forehead into Bond’s stomach. “We’re okay,” he repeated.

Bond nodded and, careful to avoid touching Q’s head wound, pulled Q close, still tightly holding onto his hand. “I thought —” he started, but he didn’t dare put it into words. He shook his head, stubble catching on Q’s wet hair, and closed his eyes. “Q.”

“I’m sorry,” Q barely whispered into Bond’s shirt.

“Don’t.” Bond brought his hand up Q’s back, stopping at his nape. “We’re okay. You said it.” He took a ragged breath and opened his eyes. “Let’s get you undressed.”

Q nodded again and sat up straight so Bond would have access to the topmost buttons. “Can we burn the clothes? You’ve been wanting to do that for awhile, right?” Q chuckled softly but honestly.

“Anything. Anything you want,” Bond promised. He knelt down in front of Q, and, with effort to let go of his hand. He started to unbutton Q’s shirt, only then realising that Q must have left his raincoat in the carriage where the guards had died. Where _he_ could have died.

Fear was familiar, but not like this — not fear for someone _else_ , not fear that Bond couldn’t face and conquer. If Q hadn’t had the whim to go play with his tech in the cargo carriage, he would have been dead, and Bond would never have known it until it was too late. And worse, there was no target for the sudden rush of anger that followed, because the attackers were already dead.

He sat down, for the first time letting himself really acknowledge that he could have lost Q. He told himself to get back up and get Q into the bath he wanted, because Q was the one who’d been alone in the dark for hours, screaming his throat bloody and raw. But all he could think was that pure chance meant he wasn’t sitting here alone.

Q watched Bond with growing concern, until he climbed down from the edge of the tub to hover in front of Bond, looking at him as if calculating something. Needing Q close, Bond twisted to get his legs out in front of himself and pulled Q into his lap so he could wrap his arms around Q’s body.

“Thank you,” Q breathed out with relief. “I was trying to figure out how to do this without me crushing you.” He wrapped his legs around Bond’s waist, threaded one hand through his hair, and let the other rest on the side of Bond’s jaw. He pressed their foreheads together and sighed. “I’m okay.”

“I love you.” Bond whispered it thoughtlessly, needing Q to understand how _important_ he was. “You can’t — You can’t leave me.”

Q nodded, body tensing against Bond’s. “I love you, too.” He rested the side of his head on Bond’s shoulder, not letting go.

 

~~~

 

Q stood in front of the bathroom mirror, staring down his own reflection. He was clean now, at least, all the blood washed from his hair and from his hands, but he still looked haggard.

Of course, he’d just spent the last several hours in hell, so Q felt he had good reason. But he was ready to be done with the whole ordeal. He wanted to erase the last vestiges of what had happened from body and mind and move on. Not just for himself, but for James.

James was still in the tub, watching him intently. Q felt terrible for what James must be going through, having come so close to losing Q. Q understood the feeling well enough; every time James had a close call, Q would be momentarily overwhelmed with the very same emotions James was presently experiencing. The difference was, of course, that Q was used to it by now. It hurt every time, but he’d learned to expect the fear, own it, and move on, trusting in James’ ability to get himself out of any situation he got himself into.

Bond had no such defenses, given that Q hadn’t been in mortal danger since starting their relationship. Even worse, Bond was used to his partners not just coming close to death, but actually dying. Being around to make sure they were still safe afterwards was probably a new experience for him.

Q got out the shaving cream and his razor, pleased to see that his hands had stopped shaking. He poured a generous amount of cream into his hand and lathered his face, wondering if he should offer to talk about what had happened.

“Do you want to talk about anything?” he asked quietly.

“You’re sure you don’t want to go to Medical for a scan?”

“No,” Q said immediately, and more harshly than he intended. He winced at the punishing drag of his own voice against his abused vocal chords and pressed his hand there, hoping the pressure would help. It didn’t, of course. “Nobody but you right now. Anything else?” He picked up the razor and drew a line down his jaw.

He heard the splash before he saw Bond get up out of the water. He had new bruises on his chest, just above where he’d been somewhat protected by the kevlar vest. His arms and hands were in far worse shape. Q had studied the marks when Bond had held him, and he concluded that Bond must have been shifting rubble and debris bare-handed, until some kind PCSO had forced him to take a long-sleeved jumper and gloves and the vest.

Bond stepped out and made a token effort to dry off by wrapping a towel around his waist. Then he very, very carefully settled his hands on Q’s hips. The fierce light hadn’t left his eyes. Right now, the best thing for Bond would probably be if some enemy assassin foolishly tried to break into the flat. It would give him a tangible target.

“Do you want more paracetamol? A glass of water?” he offered, bending his head to kiss Q’s shoulder.

Q shook his head, relieved at Bond’s easy questions. He wouldn’t refuse to answer anything tougher, and he hoped that Bond understood this was probably their last chance to ‘talk about it.’ He didn’t know if he could revisit it again later.

“I had an idea,” he offered. “About lights. And the nanobots.”

Bond met his eyes in the mirror. “Tell me.”

Q smiled at him as he continued shaving. “Fireflies,” he said. “If I could find a way for them to generate some sort of light, which shouldn’t be difficult, really, some of the swarms could exist solely to act as lights. Let them be tiny little pets that follow you around making sure you’re never in the dark. Ever.”

The gentle weight of Bond’s hands shifted. He pressed his fingers against Q’s skin and said, “Not always a good thing, in my profession, but perfect for you. I think you should try.”

“It would certainly help avoid the elbow-in-the-nose side effect of motion-activated lights you were so worried about,” Q said with a low, quick chuckle. He finished the left side of his face and started the right.

Bond’s laugh was brief but genuine — a good sign. This time, when he ducked to kiss Q’s other shoulder, the kiss lingered on Q’s still-damp skin. “You don’t like the thought of the neighbours in flats across the way watching. Won’t you worry about the fireflies?” he teased.

“Ooh, good point. Not that I care if they watch, so much, as our... _activities_ might encourage them to attempt replication thanks to their adaptive programming.” He paused, holding still so he could get the stubborn hair on and under his chin. “I wonder what a nanobot mating dance would look like?”

Bond laughed. The moment the razor was away, he caught Q around the waist, pulling him back so their bodies were pressed tightly together. “Probably beautiful, if you programmed it.”

“To Rihanna,” he said with mock thoughtfulness, swaying his hips in a quick dance motion he favoured before rinsing the razor and dropping it in its hook by the sink. “Though I don’t think I could actually fit an mp3 file on one. They’d have to wait until they heard it in the wild.”

“What?” Bond frowned in confusion.

“They’re not big enough to store any significant amount of information. So they’d only be triggered to perform the mating dance when I play Rihanna.”

Bond laughed again, and this time, the sound was more genuine — almost _himself_. “Despite any pleasant associations we might be able to create, I think eventually you’ll get sick of Rihanna.”

“Well, maybe I can switch it up a bit, just to be nice to your poor ears. I could change the artist every time I send a software update. Maybe if I’m feeling generous, I’ll even let you pick, from time to time.” He paused, considering, as he bent over to rinse his face in the sink. “Not Ozzy Osbourne, though.”

“You have an irrational hatred of classic music.” Bond stepped back, dropped the towel from around his waist, and made a cursory effort to dry off. “Do I need to shave, or can I just take you to bed now?”

“We can go to bed,” Q said, proud that his voice didn’t show any of the hesitancy he felt. On one hand, he wanted to be pressed, forehead to toes, against Bond and never, ever, ever let go again. But on the other hand, after everything that had happened, there was no way he could do much more than snuggle. He knew he’d be hypervigilant for days, if not longer, and resistant to anything that would take away his ability to be entirely aware of his surroundings at all times.

Without waiting another moment, Bond dropped the towel aside and herded Q out of the bathroom. Q’s towel disappeared along the way, and Bond didn’t even let go when he leaned around Q to pull down the blankets. He crowded Q to the middle of the bed, carefully reaching to the far side for Q’s foam pillow, which he brought to the centre.

“This should be more comfortable, if you roll over in the night,” he said, keeping Q’s back to him. With Q on his left side, the scalp wound would be away from the pillow.

Q settled on his side, tugging at the blankets as Bond settled behind him. He sighed, thinking about the fact that he was probably going to fall asleep almost immediately, his physical exhaustion trumping his mind’s desire to never close his eyes again. Tomorrow everything would be different, though, he told himself. He’d shove this whole horrible part of his history in its own box, like so many other things, and do his best to never think about it again. 

“James?”

Bond curled up tight against his back, one arm wrapped around his waist. He fitted his body as close as he could and carefully slid his other arm under Q’s pillow. He reached for Q’s hand to lace their fingers together. “Hm?”

“I... tuck things like this away. Into little boxes in my mind. So I don’t have to think about them again,” Q tried to explain. He wasn’t sure Psych would approve, but he didn’t particularly care.

But instead of acting surprised or confused, Bond just stayed still and quiet. Then, finally, he asked, “And?”

“We won’t have to talk about this ever again, right? Any of it.”

Bond sighed and gently kissed the back of Q’s head. “You never have to do or say anything you don’t want to, and I’ll shoot anyone who tries to make you do otherwise. Including all of bloody Psych.”

Q chuckled, finally allowing himself to relax completely. “Thank you.” He squeezed Bond’s hand. “We’re okay.”

“We’re okay,” Bond repeated softly, breath stirring Q’s damp hair.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not exactly the type of happy ending you're used to for this series, but I hope it's close enough!
> 
> The future of the Refractions verse is unclear at the moment. Kryptaria and I are no longer writing together, so any future installments, if there are any, will be solo efforts on our parts. 
> 
> To keep updated on whether we decide to return to this verse, and any of our future writing efforts, follow our Tumblrs:
> 
>  
> 
> <http://kryptaria.tumblr.com>
> 
>  
> 
> <http://bootsnblossoms.tumblr.com>


End file.
